The Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett
Summary
San Francisco private detective Sam Spade takes on a case involving a duplicitous client, a murdered partner, and a priceless jeweled statuette that everyone from small time grifters to a menacing crime boss will lie and kill to possess. Hammett writes in a clipped, unsentimental style that strips away the genteel puzzle solving of earlier detective fiction in favor of moral ambiguity and hard edged realism. The novel helped establish the hard boiled detective story as a serious American literary form.
Historical Context & Significance
No mystery award existed yet to honor the novel, since the Edgar Award would not be established by the Mystery Writers of America until 1946. Hammett's own influence on the genre proved larger than any prize, shaping writers from Raymond Chandler to the noir filmmakers who followed.